Ex-Vikings coach Bud Grant: Don't use outdoors money for metro parks

Former Minnesota Vikings coach Bud Grant talking shop during Mike Grants football team practice at the Eden Prairie High School football field, Wednesday, September 1, 2010. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

Bud Grant says Gov. Mark Dayton knows the right call on $9.3 million in outdoors projects approved by the House and Senate.

Veto.

The former Vikings coach is leading the charge for outdoors groups and some lawmakers urging Dayton to ax two projects: $6.3 million for metro parks and $3 million for boat inspections to combat aquatic invasive species.

The citizen-led Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council, which recommends how to spend a portion of Legacy Amendment tax funds for the outdoors, didn't endorse either project.

"If you strike a deal to include projects that went around or ignored the path through the council, you are not being a friend to the sportsmen and women," Grant told Dayton in a letter Tuesday, May 21.

"I would hate to see you jeopardize the valid concerns of those who supported you in your election campaign."

Two other groups sent similar letters this week. One was signed by more than 20 outdoors groups, including Pheasants Forever, the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association and the Nature Conservancy. Seven senators, including Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, and Tom Saxhaug, DFL-Grand Rapids, signed the other.

The two projects are the only remaining issues from a contentious debate during the 2013 legislative session over how to spend about $100 million in sales tax revenue from the 2008 Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. That's the outdoors portion of the amendment's tax, which also funds parks and trails, clean water, and arts and cultural heritage initiatives.

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The debate is a familiar one: How much money should be spent in the Twin Cities metro area vs. the rest of the state.

The bulk of sales-tax revenue is generated in the metro, but Minnesotans generally hunt and fish elsewhere in the state.

Grant, a flag-bearer for hunters and anglers who campaigned for the Legacy Amendment's passage, said it's clear what amendment supporters wanted.

"Friday afternoon, where are people going?" Grant said. "They're trying to get out of town, to greater Minnesota. That's what we thrive on. This is money for the state of Minnesota. That's what people voted for."

By statute, the money must be spent on wildlife habitat that is open to hunting.

The primary supporter of the metro parks plan was Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, who has said the Lessard-Sams Council is biased against metro parks, because many don't allow much hunting.

"The Mississippi Flyway is one of our greatest assets in the state, and it doesn't stop at the metro," Kahn has said. "That duck you shoot in Crow Wing County might have had lunch in Hennepin County."

Last year, the Lessard-Sams Council ranked an early version of a metro-parks plan too low to warrant a hearing. But Kahn, who chairs the House Legacy committee, successfully inserted a different version into the bill this year.

Lessard-Sams Council chairman David Hartwell said the new version was "significantly different" and sidestepped the council's full vetting process. He said the council would have needed more details to decide whether to support the new version, which sprinkles money throughout the metro.

Hartwell defended the council's support of metro projects, using the purchase of permanent conservation easements in Dakota County as an example.

"I think it's very wrong to say the council hasn't supported metro habitat projects," he said, "because we have."

The council, Hartwell said, also has a track record of combating invasive species: funding fish barriers, for example, and eradicating common carp from shallow lakes.

"If you're going to have inspections 40 hours a week on a lake that's open all the time, I'm sorry, but you're not going to stop an infestation," he said. "I would be happy to support mandatory decontamination and inspections for all boats, but (not) to do anything less than that.

"What we want to do with the funds out of the Legacy bill is truly create a legacy."

Kahn angered many Lessard-Sams Council supporters this year by proposing to fund a number of projects for the next two years, including more than $50 million in initiatives the council hadn't formally considered.

In the end, the compromise approved by the Senate didn't include any such appropriations. The House endorsed Kahn's plan, but the Senate didn't. The vast majority of the council's plans remain intact.

Grant said any undercutting of the Lessard-Sams Council is unacceptable.

"There's not a committee out there that's as conscientious as Lessard-Sams," Grant said in an interview. "These are not legislators, these are people who are interested in the natural resources of the state. Legislators are interested in their pet projects, getting re-elected and popularity contests."

On the campaign trail, Dayton pledged, "I will veto any legislative attempts to usurp the authority of the Lessard-Sams Council."

Grant said that, at a recent event for the new Vikings stadium, Dayton told him that the House plan would be vetoed.

How much Dayton had a hand in the final compromise, and whether he will support it, remain unclear.

Dayton's spokeswoman, Katharine Tinucci, said he was reviewing the bill.